What My Lips Have Kissed
by Morning Lullabies
Summary: Enemy turned ally turned friend turned lover; The evolution of Kagome and Sesshoumaru's relationship following the death of Inuyasha and Kikyo told in drabbles, one-shots, and vignettes.
1. I Know

_I cannot say what loves have come and gone,  
I only know that summer sang in me  
A little while, that in me sings no more._

 **(Sonnet XLIII)** Edna St. Vincent Millay

 **Prompt:** I know

* * *

She shouldn't be the one sitting here. Of course, Kagome knew that. If anything, she should be the one in the urn, existing only as a pile of soft ashes left after several years of long, happy life. Yet, here she was, in her mourning clothes, before two small graves near the Sacred Tree, with a hole in her heart the size of a galaxy. What else was she to feel when she had lost the one she loved?

If Kagome were being quite honest with herself, and she wasn't- not about this- he had never been hers. She knew that, too. Inuyasha belonged solely to Kikyo and no one else. Unfortunately, it had taken their deaths to make her realize this.

There were too many years wasted on loving him that she could never get back. There were too many feelings that she would never have returned by someone who deserved them. There would perhaps be many more years wasted on mourning her loss. All of these things were also known deep in Kagome's heart, even if she didn't wish to admit to them.

What she hadn't known, and wished she had, was that Inuyasha would be ambushed by demons on the night of the new moon. She wished she knew that Kikyo would waste away with the loss of her mate until nothing remained but the same soulless husk that had risen from the dead during Naraku's time.

If she had, maybe she could have prevented what happened. Maybe she could have helped Kikyo learn to grieve instead of insisting on focusing on her own grief. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Life was full of maybes, Kagome was quickly learning. She was also learning that she seemed to be the only one who didn't know these things.

She wiped the tears from her lashes before they spilled down her cheeks, and rose to walk away. As she turned, she found a rare visitor sitting beneath a tree, with a quiet look of contemplation on his face.

"Lord Sesshoumaru," Kagome nodded respectfully before she brushed past him on her way to the village.

"Priestess," he returned.

She knew he visited almost as much as she did, and stayed for just as long to gaze over their graves. Sesshoumaru swore, in that irritatingly arrogant way of his, that he only visited out of the honor dictated by tradition, but this time, Kagome could also swear something of her own. She knew something no one else did: Sesshoumaru visited out of love, not just an overwhelming sense of duty. If it had been duty, she knew his visits would be neither so long, nor so frequent.

She heard his voice once more, "Priestess, my brother was a blind fool."

Kagome stopped, and she grew very still, "I know."

* * *

 **Words:** 500


	2. Lost

" _That's the place to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world's somewheres, into our own nowhere."_

 **D.H. Lawrence** , Women in Love

* * *

 **Prompt:** Lost

* * *

"Why do you come here when it so obviously pains you?"

She had known he had sat down next to her. She knew the second he arrived in the clearing surrounding the Sacred Tree. What she hadn't expected, however, was for him to speak and acknowledge her beyond a polite greeting before they went on their ways. She should have known he would speak at some point. Sesshoumaru had started to arrive almost as if he waited for her to appear, and he departed only a few seconds behind her.

"Because I have nowhere else to go. Why do you come here?" Her tone was accusatory, but she could think of nothing else to say, and she tired of him invading her grief.

"My ward no longer lives with me. My lands care for themselves. My brother no longer exists. I too have nowhere else to go."

For the second time in as many weeks Kagome stopped her every movement in surprise. She had never thought of Sesshoumaru as one who needed a home, or even as one who understood the concept of home at all.

For the first time, Kagome thought perhaps they had something in common beyond Inuyasha.

* * *

 **Words:** 200


End file.
